National Academy of Sciences elects two professors
Archived article from May 8, 2006
By Ken Branson
Rochel Gelman, professor of psychology, and Henryk Iwaniec, professor of mathematics, have been elected to the National Academy of Sciences. Election to the academy is one
of the highest honors an American scientist or engineer can achieve.
Gelman is co-director, with her husband, Charles R. Gallistel, of Rutgers’ Center for Cognitive Science, and is a world-renowned pioneer in early-childhood cognition. Gallistel, a specialist in animal cognition, was elected to the academy in 2002.
Iwaniec is widely recognized as an expert in analytic number theory, which uses techniques from any branch of mathematics – instead of solely algebraic techniques – to solve arithmetic problems.
For Gelman, election to the academy is a crowning achievement. She sees it as validation of her long-held view that very young children are more competent in handling abstract concepts, especially numbers, than conventional wisdom has held. “I think it’s fair to say that Rochel was influential in starting a new perspective on cognitive development,” said Barbara McCrady, professor and chair of the department of psychology.
“The traditional perspective was that little kids were perception-bound and could not have abstract concepts – certainly not number concepts, which are the most abstract of all,” Gelman said. But early work with 5-year-olds showed Gelman that young children could indeed handle numbers. After that, she said, “I took on the traditional view with a vengeance.”
Iwaniec, a native of Poland, earned his undergraduate and doctoral degrees at the University of Warsaw. He joined the Rutgers faculty in 1987 and has held visiting professorships at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the University of Michigan and the University of Colorado. In 2001, he received the American Mathematical Society’s Cole Prize.
“Henryk is a world leader in a very difficult and highly respected field of mathematics,” said Robert Wilson, mathematics department chair. “His expertise contributes to our department’s reputation as one of the country’s leading graduate programs, and his presence draws talented graduate students and junior faculty to Rutgers.”
Iwaniec regards his election as a great honor and a chance to more widely share his views with other scientists. “Number theory is a fascinating field to engineers and scientists working on solutions to immediate problems,” he said. “Software firms have used it to create security keys that make what we had less than a decade ago seem primitive.”
Return to the May 8, 2006 issue
|
